The garage had shifted into another kind of silence now.
The kind in which people listened very carefully for what happened next.
Devlin, 45, had been with the chapter for nineteen years.
He had seen stranger things than a teenage girl walking into the garage asking for work.
Still, even he tilted his head.
“You always walk into places and tell people their work isn’t exceptional?”
“Only when it isn’t,” Sky said. “And only when I can do better.”
“That’s a big claim.”
Sky took the backpack off her shoulder.
She unzipped the main compartment and removed a folded portfolio with clear plastic sleeves.
Then she held it out toward Devlin.
“Then look.”
Devlin glanced at Jimmy.
Jimmy made a tiny gesture with one hand.
Devlin accepted the portfolio.
He opened it.
He looked at the first page.
He said nothing.
He turned to the second.
Then the third.
After several pages, Devlin had unconsciously moved three steps closer to the overhead light.
“Jimmy,” he said without looking up.
“I’m busy.”
“Jimmy.”
Something in the second delivery was different.
Jimmy stopped pretending to be busy.
He walked over.
Then he looked over Devlin’s shoulder.
The work was something else.
Skulls that looked as though they breathed.
Eagles with individually rendered feathers, each one a slightly different shade.
A wolf mid-howl stretched across an entire tank and somehow appeared to be moving even though the image was completely still.
Flames that did not resemble every other set of custom flames Jimmy had seen in forty years around motorcycles.
These had direction.
Weight.
Heat.
And threaded through every piece was a quality that was difficult to describe to someone who had never worked around custom paint.
Confidence.
Certainty.
Every line looked as though the person making it had known exactly where it would end before the brush touched the surface.
Jimmy pointed toward the wolf.
“How old were you when you did this one?”
“Fifteen.”
Jimmy turned his head.
“Fifteen?”
“I know.”
He studied the page several seconds longer.
Then he closed the portfolio, handed it back to Devlin, and looked at Sky again.
“Where’d you learn?”
Something changed in Sky’s face.
Only for a second.
A flicker.
The way a candle moves when a door opens somewhere else in the house.
It was not fear.
It was not embarrassment.
It looked like grief.
Old grief.
The settled kind.
“My brother,” she said. “He taught me.”
“Your brother’s a painter?”
The pause lasted one second longer than it should have.
“He was.”
The garage became very quiet.
Jimmy studied her face.
Twenty years of reading rooms and people had made him good at recognizing the difference between someone hiding something and someone carrying something too heavy to set down all at once.
This girl was carrying something.
He could see it.
But Jimmy also had twelve motorcycles in different stages of assembly, a prospect who had recently quit, and a garage full of work.
It was Tuesday.
He did not have time for every mystery that walked through the door.
“Look,” Jimmy said. “I’m not going to throw you out. But I can’t hand you a bike on your word and a portfolio.”
“I know.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
Sky nodded toward the work area.
“Hand me a tank. Whatever you’ve got sitting around that you haven’t started. Give me two hours and see what I do with it.”
Jimmy looked at her for a long moment.
“You’ll work for tips?”
“Until you decide.”
Jimmy looked at Devlin.
Devlin gave the smallest shrug imaginable.
In their private language, it meant he did not hate the idea.
Jimmy looked back at Sky.
“What did you say your brother’s name was?”
“I didn’t.”